Beauty and the Beast

Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly
Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared
Beauty and the Beast

Ever just the same
Ever a surprise
Ever as before
Ever just as sure
As the sun will rise

Tale as old as time
Tune as old as song
Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you were wrong
Certain as the sun
Rising in the east
Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast

This movie was and is perhaps my favorite Disney musical of all time. It still makes me choke up, still makes me root for the anti hero, still makes me remember a time in my life where all I wanted was a prince to make everything ok in my life.

I remember, when I came home from college a broken girl, nothing left inside but a vacant darkness, sick, and wishing for that time before I'd bitten the cursed apple from the garden of Eden. I wanted the simple uncomplicated life back, something you lose forever when you discover knowledge and experience, good and bad. I remember trimming the tree while watching Beauty and the Beast, and to this day it's a tradition I keep up every year. Because there are so many important lessons in this movie, so many real life scenarios. Things like the Prince isn't always perfect. Things like meeting the right man doesn't solve all the problems in your life. Things like love requires compromise and patience, humor and understanding. Things like sometimes real life interferes in even the best romance, no matter how great someones intentions are.

Tonight, as I watched it with my sick but recovering daughter, I thought about Malcolm. And it struck another chord in me, made me remember how it all started for us. LOL, so no, Malcolm definitely is not the Beast, but perhaps I was. Unsure, awkward, occasionally hating the way I looked and allowing it to color the way I interacted with others. But I remember after meeting him how I was resolved to keep it casual, to keep him as a friend in my life, someone who could bring me moments of brightness and pleasure as I struggled, at the time, to reconstruct my life anew. I remember, after the 4th or 5th time I spent the day with him feeling like something had changed, like something was happening. I wasn't sure if it was just me or not, after all....women do have that unique ability to construct whole relationships solely in the midst of their imaginations, and I was terrified that was the case. So I put it out there for him to answer, to see if I was getting ahead of myself. But no, he confirmed that things were changing, ever so slightly, and slowly, for him as well. It was scary, that change from friend to more. And just like the song says, neither one of us were prepared for it. Neither one of us had been expecting it.

Every day, still, is a surprise. Things are the same, yet subtly better as time goes on. We fight, not angrily. We argue, with love. We make love, we have ridiculous raunchy sex. We live our lives together and separately. But we are connected. As his flower, I am transformed, and I am his beauty. Nobody Else's opinion really matters after that, true?

Malcolm and I have both learned, this year, that we can be wrong, and be wrong to each other. We've also learned to compromise, to care for each other's feelings, and to come back stronger again and again. As he apologized to me yet again for his harshness in October, finally, FINALLY understanding my then angst over allowing a viper in the pit, he admitted that he needed to hear me more, and prejudge less. I hardly ever jump to hysterics for nothing, and this tape did indeed play itself out to the end exactly as anticipated. I love him more for being the man he is, for being able to come to my conclusion on his own in the end, and for doing the right thing at last.

It's not a perfect relationship, and beautiful as he is, he's not a perfect man. But he is pretty perfect for me. Our relationship makes us work, makes us compromise for each other to keep each other happy. It's not a new formula for making a relationship work. Honesty, integrity, patience, and lots and lots of humor and love. Lots of people give us the hairy eyebrow when they see the guts of our relationship and how it works. The important thing is that it works for us, and works well. And in the end, isn't the important thing THAT you make it work, and not HOW you make it work?